Gun Rights - Striving For Safety

June 27, 2014 9:15:08 AM PDT

Personal Safety Is Everyone's Goal

The vast majority of the people who fully support gun control are not the enemy, of course, and all they truly want is peace and not to see so many massacres and deaths taking place in this country on a now daily and weekly basis due to the illegal and inappropriate use of firearms. Ironically, the people who are for legal gun possession want exactly the same thing: fewer deaths and crime in this country and any country on the planet.

Most of us don't like death or crime, and the best thing would be to approach the situation wisely, showing great respect to all the families who have lost their loved ones because of guns and search for the deeper roots of the problem and the real causes.

To begin with, we should consider that police officers, whom I personally highly respect when they do their duty in the name of justice, can't handle or take care of all of the criminals in the world. Just like in the films or TV series we watch, the police usually arrive at the crime scene after the crime has already begun, and many times even after it has ended. In life-and-death situations, seconds can make a huge difference and no human being, who is not Spider-Man or Superman, can cover a distance of a few miles inside a couple of seconds or minutes.

Despite what anyone who is against gun use and ownership tells you about guns, it has been proven time and again that the simple sight of a firearm or a handgun inside your waistband has prevented many criminals from attempting their crime.

An Argument For Concealed Carry

Many bad things can happen to you or the people you love in a five-minute wait (if we are unarmed and call the police) when there is a gunman confronting you. However, we can't deny the facts: a few studies have indicated that the guns used in a majority of the massacres that have occurred in America in the last 20 years were purchased legally. But is this the real cause behind the violent massacres or instead we should all worry about the violent role models and the reprehensible thug image this country has been promoting through TV, film, music, and pop culture for many years? Of course, most won't talk about these issues openly because the fact is that the aforementioned causes of the problem make the same media (that is against guns) a few billion dollars each year. So before we accuse firearms of a massacre or terrorist attack let's look deeper and research the background of the people who commit such crimes. Guns don't kill, people do!

Another misconception and main argument of those who are against gun possession is the false and inaccurate claim that handguns and firearms of any kind increase suicide rates, when there are countries where gun possession is banned with way higher suicide rates than the US, with Greenland and Lithuania being the prime examples. If that's the case then we should ban high-rises, ropes, and knives too. Hopefully you get the picture. America is not even in the top 30 countries with the highest suicide rate so this argument isn't even valid.

Before closing this article, we should make perfectly clear that criminals and psychopaths will either ignore the laws or find other weapons with which to commit crimes, and we are sad to say it but this is the plain truth. The most tragic event in recent American history, the 9/11 attacks, didn't use firearms but airplanes. Should we then ban airplanes too? In the end, if we banned everything that remotely presented the possibility of harm or death to another human being, what would we have left? I hope we all agree that we need to find better ways to confront terrorism and crime.

Again, firearms don't kill, people do!

About The Author

Theodoros II is a lawyer, former Greek Navy Seal, and writer. His work has been published in Gizmodo, Listverse, Toptenz, mental_floss, Neatorama, Oddee, TCmag, and Today I Found Out. His work has also appeared in Best Rock Writing 2014 and Listserve.com’s Epic Book of (Mind-Boggling) Top 10 Lists. If you are interested in reading more of his work you can visit his blog at .